We are Forest! Conversations on Urban Forestry

‘Conversations on Urban Forestry’ was delivered to me by mail one day in January. Johanna Gibbons had already told me about this project she had been working on for some time and her words had fed my curiosity to read it and the desire to finally hold it in my hands. In fact, the first feeling was tactile, opening the book almost seems to flip through the trunk of the plane tree whose texture gives materiality to the cover. I was able to leisurely enjoy its pages during the sunny afternoons of the lockdown, spent on my balcony with sunglasses.

The book is about trees, forests, people and conversations that talk about volunteer experiences, scientific laboratories, memory projects, and urban resilience. It is no coincidence that this is the first publication by Landscape Learn, a Social Enterprise born thanks to the landscape architecture studio J&L Gibbons, of which Johanna is the founder.

Landscape Learn is a project born to share knowledge in landscape architecture, open to the community, and to a wide network of experts with the aim of providing an agile, alternative, cross-disciplinary and immersive approach to learning. Since its birth in 2016, different meetings have been organized in England, Italy, and Norway; opportunities for sharing knowledge, and having pleasant informal moments of collective life.

The book shifts this alternative approach to a publication that talks about urban forestry in scientific terms not forgetting the empathic connotations and strong social and cultural connections that this topic brings with it. The time of the narration is marked by meetings that Johanna Gibbons had with experts and people who in different fields, study and take care of the trees in UK; an exploration that celebrates the relationships of interconnected life.

Johanna defines Urban Forest ‘a huge living organism that humanises city canyons, (…) a living heritage linking the distant past into the future’, and underlines once again the aspects that connect trees to man and the related cultural and ecological heritage.

John Deakin works as a forester in Windsor Great Park. Here each tree is seen in the complexity of the forest system and then left to its natural decline. In this monumental forest where forest restoration projects are tested, the opportunity to explore innovative practice also guarantees the possibility of nurturing the next generation of foresters in a bigger strategic plan for understanding the whole life cycle. John Deakin states: ‘Deadwood is alive!’

Annie Chipchase is an ecologist committed to organizing a network of volunteers in an abandoned area right in the neighbourhood recently transformed by the Olympics.
The Tree Nursery is a charity having linked with a group of passionate arborists who take care of the trees across the borough, cultivated plants, creating employment and promoting the idea that everything is connected.

Jake Tibbetts is an arboriculturalist who works in the City of London as Managing Officer for Parks and Gardens. His passion was born when he was a child climbing his grandfather’s apple trees; now there can’t be many who know London trees better than he does. Jake focuses on the economic role now recognized to urban trees and on the job of the custodians of this huge urban heritage that has a lot to do with empathy and the ability to communicate with the community.

Atmospheric engineer Rob Mackenzie takes us to a magical place: Mill Haft, a forest over 150 years old that has become an experiment promoted by the University of Birmingham. BIFoR-FACE is an open-air lab in which fascinating highly technological structures seem land art installations in the wood used to monitor the forest and understand how much this is able to protect humanity from its own mismanagement of the planet. The project is one of the largest ecology experiments in the UK and Europe.

John Deakin works as a forester in Windsor Great Park. Here each tree is seen in the complexity of the forest system and then left to its natural decline. In this monumental forest where forest restoration projects are tested, the opportunity to explore innovative practice also guarantees the possibility of nurturing the next generation of foresters in a bigger strategic plan for understanding the whole life cycle. John Deakin states: ‘Deadwood is alive!’

Annie Chipchase is an ecologist committed to organizing a network of volunteers in an abandoned area right in the neighbourhood recently transformed by the Olympics.

The Tree Nursery is a charity having linked with a group of passionate arborists who take care of the trees across the borough, cultivated plants, creating employment and promoting the idea that everything is connected.

Jake Tibbetts is an arboriculturalist who works in the City of London as Managing Officer for Parks and Gardens. His passion was born when he was a child climbing his grandfather’s apple trees; now there can’t be many who know London trees better than he does. Jake focuses on the economic role now recognized to urban trees and on the job of the custodians of this huge urban heritage that has a lot to do with empathy and the ability to communicate with the community.

Atmospheric engineer Rob Mackenzie takes us to a magical place: Mill Haft, a forest over 150 years old that has become an experiment promoted by the University of Birmingham. BIFoR-FACE is an open-air lab in which fascinating highly technological structures seem land art installations in the wood used to monitor the forest and understand how much this is able to protect humanity from its own mismanagement of the planet. The project is one of the largest ecology experiments in the UK and Europe.

Looking at the photos of the protagonists of the book, my thought immediately went to a morning in December spent with Johanna’s father, Anthony Blee, a chartered architect, Senior Partner of the Sir Basil Spence Partnership.

That day, during an interview later published in my Ph.D., Anthony told me about the ‘Living National Treasures’¹ . I knew nothing about this title used in Japan for designating the custodians of important intangible cultural properties. The title is considered of great honour and it is referred to the ones who are the living memories of those intangible artistic, scientific, and cultural skills sharing their knowledge from generation to generation.

The first living treasures (1) and protagonists of the book are obviously the trees that connect natural heritage over time. But Jeremy Dagley, Michael Smythe, John Deakin, Annie Chipchase, Jake Tibbetts, Rob Mackenzie and people like Johanna can be also considered living treasures due to the fact that are taking care of our forests and then of the community.

Johanna argues that the urban forest is about people, their cultural and ecological heritage; ‘but it is as much about heritage as it is the future’.
In this historical moment in which cities are growing and becoming a place where unexpected risks are closely connected with climate change, there has never been a more crucial time to focus all our energies on protecting and fostering the growth of the urban forest.

‘We shape the forest; the forest shapes us.’

For more information and to purchase the publication: Conversations on Urban Forestry

1. “Part of the honour of being named a ’living treasure’ in Japan requires that you, as a recipient of that honour, train apprentices in your skills, so that they are passed on from generation to generation. That’s really important. And what saddens me today, compared with my young days as an architect is that there is a widening gap between the concept of the design and the talent of craftsmen. Such living treasures that we have are not be required to pass that skill on.”, Anthony Blee, interview 12 December 2016, in Landscape Design Process Reverse Reading, Exploratory Design Research on J&L Gibbons studio, fieldnotes, Claudia Mezzapesa, PhD research in landscape architecture, University of Florence, 2018